It was not long. Every one is attracted by the furs, the carvings, the silver buttons, the soft eider rugs with their beautiful green duck-breast borderings. In the sweet summer dusk it is pleasant to stroll about the little town, buy cherries from the men who bring their baskets of ripe fruit, and turn into this store of Norwegian handiwork. It is more enchanting to go to the front of the hotel, where the fjord runs up between snow-flecked hills, and ends. Grave evening purples steal over the land; in the sky, and reflected in the faithful waters, daffodil and primrose tints melt into each other. A yacht lay in a sea of gold, her fine delicate lines repeated below. A light shone out. Some one stood at the top of the landing steps, looking at the water. Wareham hesitated, then quickly walked up to her.
“I expected to overtake you at the Lotefos,” he said abruptly.
She did not turn her head.
“Are you grateful to me for having spared you the encounter?”
“If I were, should I be here?”
“Very likely. I do not know why you have come.”
“I venture to bring a suggestion.”
“More likely a reproach,” she said. “I believe you are determined to force a quarrel upon me.”
“You misjudge me—indeed you misjudge me!” He spoke warmly, then hesitated. “Certainly we need not quarrel,” he said slowly. “The fates have flung us together, and it appears to me that for a time at least we might leave the past behind us. Forbes is my friend. I cannot think that he was well treated—your friends, doubtless, would take another view. But if we are not likely to agree on this one subject, there are, happily, others in the world to talk about. Come. Do you agree?”
She did not immediately answer. He found himself speculating anxiously what her words would be. When they dropped from her at last, he hung on the low tones—